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ME ASPECTS OF THE 
CABINET MEETING 



PAPER READ BEFORE THE 

COLUMBIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

of Washington, D. C, 

TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1914 


, By Henry Barrett Learned 

Author of 

The President's Cabinet: Studies in the 
Origin, Formation and Structure of 
An American Institution 


Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Columbia 
Historical Society. Vol. 18 


1915 







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SOME ASPECTS OF THE 
CABINET MEETING 


PAPER READ BEFORE THE 

COLUMBIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

of Washington, D. C. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1914 


By Henry Barrett Learned 

Author of 

The President’s Cabinet: Studies in the 
Origin, Formation and Structure of 
An American Institution 


Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Columbia 
Historical Society. Vol. 18 


1915 











. 































































































. 



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SOME ASPECTS OF THE CABINET MEETING. 

By Henry Barrett Learned. 

(Read before the Society, April 21, 1914.) 

The Cabinet meeting has always been to contem¬ 
poraries other than Cabinet members something of a 
mystery. Rumors as to proceedings and routine, the 
truth or falsity of which cannot easily be tested, keep 
in circulation and afford an attractive theme for gossip 
and guessing. For example, Cabinet days have long 
been known to be Tuesdays and Fridays. These were 
taken for granted as such under the present adminis¬ 
tration until someone ventured the statement during 
the past autumn that President Wilson had departed 
from one more precedent by abandoning Cabinet meet¬ 
ings altogether. The gossip-compelling assertion, 
whatever its source, fell upon listening ears. In the 
course of time, with an authentic sound as though 
coming from that center of mystery, the White House, 
word once more got into print that the President 
wished it understood that meetings of the Cabinet were 
being held twice a week with regularity; and more¬ 
over that no member of the council absented himself 
from the meetings, if present in Washington on a 
Cabinet day, without good reason. This second rumor 
with reference to the regularity of Cabinet meetings 
today I have been accidentally able to verify as correct. 
But it is not my purpose to speak of the stories as to 
present-day doings or practices in the Cabinet room in 
the White House, for the onlooker has as a rule no 
reliable sources of information about the nature of 
Cabinet meetings. 

When in June, 1867, the Judiciary Committee of the 
House of Representatives was considering the problem 
95 


96 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

of impeaching President Johnson, it attempted to pry 
into the workings of Johnson’s Cabinet, summoning 
most of the members as well as their private secretaries 
and questioning them closely. Stanton and Seward, 
according to Gideon Welles’s intimate record in his 
Diary? 

“thought the matter might be got along with by answering 
pretty fully all questions that were put without any allusion 
to the fact whether it was or was not a cabinet subject. I 
doubted [declared Welles] whether it was right to disclose 
what had occurred in Cabinet to such a committee,—perhaps 
to any one at present.” 

The sentiment probably represents an old ideal in¬ 
stinctively adopted by the intimate counsellors of any 
chief magistrate. Every administration is bound to 
have and to hold sacred its secrets. It must be admitted, 
consequently, at the outset that there are grave diffi¬ 
culties ahead of anyone who seeks to penetrate into the 
Cabinet meeting—at least to one who would get some 
way under the mere superficial forms and routine of 
the institution. Nevertheless there is abundant ma¬ 
terial to he found on the subject, much of which has not 
been at all carefully explored or studied. Intimate 
records such as letters, diaries and, occasionally, formal 
notes of Cabinet proceedings are to be found which help 
to tell the story of the meetings. Usually brought to 
light long after the events narrated, they afford be¬ 
lated, though vivid and illuminating transcripts for the 
historian. 

Presidents have very frequently gained great credit 
for the ideas and efforts of Cabinet members or other 
assistants. The corollary to this proposition may be 
stated in the pregnant utterance of an old English 


nil, 102-103 (June 4, 1867). 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


97 


Jesuit, quoted by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff in his 
Notes from a Diary: 

“It is surprising how much good a man may do in the world 
if he allows others to take the credit of it.” 

The corollary may be easily illustrated in our own 
annals. 

Though responsible for the idea of a farewell ad¬ 
dress, Washington, it is well known, accepted the aid 
of Hamilton and others in its final formulation in Sep¬ 
tember, 1796. It may be doubted whether today care¬ 
ful students can accept the old view * 2 that President 
Jefferson was unaided in the matter of the purchase 
of Louisiana. Gallatin, Levi Lincoln and others helped 
him in a confusing situation. It has been established 
satisfactorily that the Secretary of State, John Quincy 
Adams, was chiefly responsible for persuading Monroe 
to adopt in his message of December, 1823, the words 
that are so well known today as constituting the essence 
of the so-called Monroe Doctrine. 3 Who, it may be 
asked, were the authors of Jackson’s leading state 
papers—of his messages and, in particular, of his 
Nullification Proclamation? In truth, it would be 
really difficult to prove that he wrote any one of them 
without much assistance. The Tariff Act of 1846, 
famous as a Democratic measure of far-reaching im¬ 
port, was the work of Polk’s Secretary of the Treas¬ 
ury, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi. Walker was 
likewise the creator of the statute in all its essential 
points which in 1849 established the Secretaryship and 
Department of the Interior, 4 for he drew the bill at the 
request of a committee of Congress. Without detract- 

J C. Ellis Stevens, Sources of the Constitution of the United States 

(1894), p. 167, ft. note 2. 

•W. C. Ford, John Quincy Adams: His Connection With the Mon¬ 
roe Doctrine (1823), Cambridge, 1902. 

4 H. B. Learned, The President's Cabinet (1912), pp. 275*287. 



98 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

ing from Lincoln’s fame, one should remember that 
John Quincy Adams years before the Civil War 
4 ‘blazed the path” to the Proclamation of Emancipa¬ 
tion of January 1, 1863. * 5 And there can be no doubt, 
on the basis of Welles’s Diary and such portions of 
Chase’s Diary as have thus far been printed, 6 that the 
final form of the Proclamation was not attained with¬ 
out sundry consultations with his most intimate Cabi¬ 
net advisers. “President Lincoln,” said a writer in 
the North American Review 1 of November, 1880, “ . . . 
seldom or never had any Cabinet meetings.” The 
statement today is reduced to the level of amusing fic¬ 
tion. We now know that George Bancroft, the his¬ 
torian, wrote President Johnson’s first annual message 
of December, 1865. 7 Seward and Stanton together 
formulated Johnson’s veto message of the Tenure of 
Office Bill of March, 1867. 8 Jeremiah S. Black was 
the author of Johnson’s third annual message of 
December, 1867. 9 Under date of June 13, 1870, Presi¬ 
dent Grant issued a special message on Cuban affairs, 
indicating an attitude on the part of the United States 
of non-intervention. This was strictly the work of 
Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. 10 Illustrations of 
the corollary may rest here. It is enough to conclude 
that most statesmen accomplish their ends by the 
active cooperation and intimate efforts of many advis¬ 
ers both in and outside the circle of the Cabinet. 

I propose to limit this preliminary study of a large 
and refractory theme chiefly to the records and words 

B C. F. Adams, John Quincy Adams and Emancipation under Mar¬ 

tial Law (1819-1842), pp. 71 ff. 

6 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1902 
Vol. II. 

7 W. A. Dunning in Amer. Hist. Review (April, 1906), XI, 674 ff. 

*Diary of Gideon Welles (1911), III, 157-158; see also Amer. Hist. 
Review (October, 1913), p. 110. 

8 W. A. Dunning, op. cit., pp. 587, 592. 

10 W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction , Political and Economic (1907), 

p. 172. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 99 

of actual participants in the Cabinet meeting. Presi¬ 
dents and principal officers are alone competent, if they 
will, to tell at least that portion of the truth about 
the past which they had opportunity to know and to 
appreciate. The paper is based upon examination of 
written records—oftentimes very slight glimpses, it 
is true—from such men of upwards of 1,100 Cabinet 
meetings occurring at different periods of our history. 

I. 

It is fair to remember at the outset that our knowl¬ 
edge of Cabinet affairs since the incoming of Grant’s 
administration in March, 1869, is comparatively slight. 
Grant adopted Tuesdays and Fridays as regular Cabi¬ 
net days, 11 following the precedent in this respect of 
both Lincoln and Johnson. From such men as Hon. 
Hilary A. Herbert, Charles J. Bonaparte, John D. 
Long, and ex-Presidents Hayes and Harrison (among 
others) we have gained slight glimpses of Cabinet cus¬ 
toms and affairs. 12 But there have not yet appeared in 
print any really informing records on Cabinet meet¬ 
ings in the shape of day-to-day diaries which would 
illuminate any portion of the past forty-five years of 
Cabinet history. The manuscript diary of Hamilton 
Fish, Grant’s able Secretary of State, is in existence 
and has been consulted occasionally by scholars; and 
I am informed on good authority, that a member of 
President Roosevelt’s Cabinet from 1905 to 1909 kept 
a careful record of sundry Cabinet councils. In the 

n Welles, Diary , III, 547 (March 8, 1869). 

“Hilary A. Herbert, “Cleveland and His Cabinet at Work,” Cen¬ 
tury (March, 1913), 85: 740-744. Charles J. Bonaparte, “Experi¬ 
ences of a Cabinet Officer Under Roosevelt,” Century (March, 1910), 
79: 752-758. John D. Long, “Some Personal Characteristics of Presi¬ 
dent McKinley,” Century (November, 1901), 63:144 ff. John D. 
Long, “The American Navy: Some Personal Reminiscences,” The 
Outlook (October 3, 1903), 287-295. B. Harrison, This Country of 
Ours (1897), pp. 105-106. C. E. Stevens, op. cit., p. 167, note 2. 



100 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

course of time the historian may hope to have these 
and similar intimate records at his disposal. But until 
this time comes, we must rest content with the com¬ 
paratively abundant resources of the years before 
1869. Before turning to some of these earlier re¬ 
sources, I wish briefly to attend to a few matters per¬ 
taining to more recent Cabinet meetings. 

The Cabinet meetings of President Harrison, held on 
Tuesdays and Fridays as a rule unless for any reason 
the President was obliged to be absent, were primarily 
conferences on national business and were devoted to 
“ matters of importance affecting the general policy of 
the administration.’’ Departmental matters might be 
brought forward whenever a principal officer desired 
a general discussion and opinion; but the rule was to 
determine all such matters as far as possible outside 
the council chamber, by conference between the Presi¬ 
dent and the department head. The President was pro¬ 
nounced in his view against regarding a Cabinet officer 
as a 44 mere clerk.’’ Notes of Cabinet affairs were 
rarely taken. Such social intercourse between the 
members as might be freely and easily indulged in— 
the give and take of commonplace conversation and 
gossip—came, if at all, only after the business was 
over and after the President had departed. 13 

Rather different impressions of President McKin¬ 
ley’s council have come from ex-Secretary of the Navy 
John D. Long. A friendly and affable spirit such as 
was characteristic of Mr.. McKinley pervaded the 
regular Tuesday-Friday sessions. The Cabinet was, 
we are assured, ‘ 4 not an over-solemn body. ’ ’ There was 
no parliamentary procedure 4 4 and never a formal 
vote.” 

3S Private letter to the writer, dated March 2, 1911, from Harri¬ 
son’s Secretary of the Interior (1889-1893), Hon. John W. Noble. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 101 

“Nobody ever ‘addressed the chair’ or stood upon his feet. 
Matters were discussed in a conversational way. When the 
President had arrived at a result, he nodded to each member 
in succession, saying ‘You agree?’ until the last one had 
assented, and then wound the matter up by saying ‘You all 
agree.’ Rarely was there any non-consent. . .” 

The meetings were not opened very promptly at 
11 o’clock, for anecdotes and gossip, sometimes occupy¬ 
ing fifteen or twenty minutes, were very apt to precede 
the real business of the sessions. When business was 
begun, the President called upon the principal officers 
in order of precedence, beginning as a matter of course 
with the Secretary of State. 14 Considering the enor¬ 
mous business of the departments, it was noticeable, 
according to Mr. Long, “how comparatively much of 
it was disposed of by its head at his office and how 
little was brought up by him for Cabinet considera¬ 
tion.” 

Most of the members of the Cabinet—the Secretaries 
of State, John Sherman, William R. Day (later Asso¬ 
ciate Justice of the Supreme Court) and John Hay; 
Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, Secretary 
of War Russell H. Alger, the Attorneys-General Mc¬ 
Kenna, Griggs and Knox; Gary, Postmaster-General, 
and Bliss, Secretary of the Interior—were usually 
quickly through their business. But Secretary of War 
Root (succeeding General Alger) had often many mat¬ 
ters to bring forward, for in dealing with the Philip¬ 
pines he had to act “not only as Secretary of War but 
as Attorney-General and Secretary of State... ” 
When Mr. Root’s turn came, “it was recognized that 
there would be little time left for anybody else, espe¬ 
cially as he spoke with a trained lawyer’s fullness.” 

“Although the Postmaster-General was not regularly admitted to 
the Cabinet circle until 1829, he precedes the Secretary of the Navy 
in rank. 



102 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

At length came the turn of the Secretary of Agricul¬ 
ture, James Wilson—“ Scotch by birth but thoroughly 
American in every fiber. When Mr. Root finished his 
docket,” remarks Mr. Long, “the time was usually so 
far exhausted that we at the foot of the table used to 
suggest merrily that it would be a fair thing to begin, 
sometimes, at the other end of the line. Still, it often 
happened that Wilson, whose word of hard common 
sense always weighed with the President, did get in a 
sentence or two that went directly to the heart of what¬ 
ever subject was on tap . . . ” As one might suspect, 
it was John Hay who proved “a delight to the Cabi¬ 
net Board, full of humor, apt in anecdote, showing in 
every word and phrase the cultivated scholar without 
the slightest trace of the pedant. ’’ 

Such glimpses as these of two recent Cabinets are to 
be gained by hunting in popular records. They are 
certainly slight enough and afford hardly anything 
beyond sketches of routine and impressions of per¬ 
sonalities. Yet they will serve the immediate purpose 
of illustrating the meagerness of our recent knowledge 
as compared with our knowledge of earlier times. 

II. 

When we speak of Washington’s “Cabinet” what 
we see, if we stop to visualize its personnel, is the 
rather formal figure of Washington, grey-haired, tall, 
even imposing in stature, and four principal officers: 
Hamilton, the short, youthful-appearing Secretary of 
the Treasury; Jefferson, thirteen years older thau 
Hamilton, at the head of the State Department; Ran¬ 
dolph, the Attorney-General, former Governor of Vir¬ 
ginia (like Jefferson) and chief spokesman for his 
State of Virginia in the Convention that formulated 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


103 


the Constitution; and General Henry Knox, stout and 
stocky in figure, good-natured, deferential to his col¬ 
leagues whom, in many respects, he recognized as intel¬ 
lectually his superiors. The fact that five other men— 
Timothy Pickering, Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Dr. James 
McHenry, William Bradford, of Pennsylvania, and 
Charles Lee—in 1794 and 1795 had taken the places 
of the first four hardly affects the popular recollection. 
Inasmuch as there is no clear evidence of any very 
marked homogeneity between the members of Wash¬ 
ington’s council and the President by the time, at any 
rate, that Hamilton resigned in the spring of 1795, 
there is some reason for the popular view. Hamilton, 
though youngest member, was distinctly the member 
on whom Washington put greatest dependence. The 
President listened carefully to whatever he had to say 
on many varieties of matters as well as on financial 
subjects. His written opinions, if not always reveal¬ 
ing Jefferson’s painstaking care, were sure to be dis¬ 
cerning and could be very influential with Washington. 
Jefferson was enormously industrious and painstak¬ 
ing in the opinions which he wrote; and his letters and 
notes afford clear evidence of his regard for details. 
He disliked Hamilton, although he was not at all blind 
to his abilities and virtues. “Hot-headed, all imagina¬ 
tion, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful & even 
indecent towards the P. in his written as well as verbal 
communications, talking of appeals from him to Con¬ 
gress, from them to the people, urging the most unrea¬ 
sonable & groundless propositions, & in the most dic¬ 
tatorial style ...” Thus wrote Jefferson of Hamil¬ 
ton in a mood of irritability. “He renders my position 
immensely difficult,” he added. “He does me justice 
personally, and, giving him time to vent himself & then 
cool, I am on a footing to advise him freely, & he re- 


104 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

spects it, but he breaks out again on the very first occa¬ 
sion. . . . ,m “I know,” declared Hamilton confiden¬ 
tially to Washington on September 9, 1792, 4 ‘ that I 
have been an object of uniform opposition from Mr. 
Jefferson, from the first moment of his coming to 
the City of New York to enter upon his present 
office . . . ,ne Yet Jefferson, at times bitter enough 
to Hamilton, could thus say to Knox: 

“When the hour of dinner is approaching, sometimes it 
rains, sometimes it is too hot for a long walk, sometimes 
your business would make you wish to remain longer at your 
office or return there after dinner, and make it more eligible 
to take any sort of a dinner in town—any day and every day 
that this would be the case you would make me supremely 
happy by messing with me, without ceremony or other 
question than whether I dine at home. The hour is from 
one quarter to three quarters after three, and taking your 
chance as to fare, you w r ill be sure to meet a sincere welcome 
from 

Yours Affectly. & respectfully . . .” 17 

Washington began his administration in May, 1789, 
by conferring with various men in matters of admin¬ 
istrative and formal importance: with Madison, Jay, 
Hamilton, Vice-President Adams, and others. It was 
not until May, 1790,—a year later—that his four prin¬ 
cipal officers were together in New York City and con¬ 
sequently so placed as to be summoned readily by the 
President to a conference or consultation. If “con¬ 
sultations, ’ ’ as such assembled meetings of President 
and principal officers were at first called, occurred dur¬ 
ing 1790, they have escaped any record. Written 
opinions were frequently asked for; and there were 

15 Jefferson’s Writings (ed. P. L. Ford. Federal edition), VII, 436- 
437. July 7, 1793. The outbreak at this time was due to the “Pa- 
cificus” letters of Hamilton. 

"Hamilton’s Works (Fed. ed. H. C. Lodge), VII, 303 ff. 

"Jefferson MSS. Special Subjects. Library of Congress. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


105 


conferences between Washington and this or that offi¬ 
cial. Probably consultations in council did actually 
take place as a reasonable mode of expediting matters. 
But the first explicit record of a consultation that was 
essentially a 4 ‘Cabinet’’ meeting is only found in 
April, 1791. Jefferson, the Secretary of State, pre¬ 
served careful details of it, and was present with his 
colleagues, Hamilton and Knox. Vice-President Adams 
was likewise at the meeting. The President himself 
had requested that such a meeting be called in his 
absence on a tour in the South in case administrative 
business seemed to warrant it; and he asked that the 
Vice-President be invited to attend. The meeting was 
held on Monday, April 11, probably at Jefferson’s 
house, for the gentlemen dined together in the after 
noon before settling down to serious work. The Attor¬ 
ney-General, Randolph, was not there. 18 During 1791 
and 1792 there are a few rather scanty allusions to or 
records of similar meetings—about a dozen such 
glimpses, all told, of as many meetings. 

In 1793, the year best remembered by the issuance in 
April of the Neutrality Proclamation and the unfor¬ 
tunate and troublesome appearance of Genet, meet¬ 
ings of the Cabinet came thick and fast. The very 
seriousness of the situation probably kept the Cabinet 
together, for both Hamilton and Jefferson threatened 
to resign. Washington felt obliged to exact many 
written opinions from his three leading assistants, 
Hamilton, Jefferson, and Randolph, and a few such 
from Knox. At least forty-six Cabinet meetings are 
noted in different sources as occurring during that 
year—a conspicuously large number in view of the fact 

1S H. B. Learned, The President's Cabinet , pp. 123*125. There is 
not a contemporary word to show that Randolph was present, 
although Jefferson in 1818 thought that he recalled his presence! 



106 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

that we have glimpses over the entire eight years of 
only about sixty-five meetings of the council. The 
meetings were usually held at the President’s house 
in Philadelphia, at 9 o’clock in the morning. Rarely 
they were not assembled until 10 o’clock. One meet¬ 
ing—Friday, November 1—was held at Germantown. 
Now and then the council assembled at the War Office; 
occasionally at Jefferson’s office; and once at the Gov¬ 
ernor’s office in the State House. It is not by any 
means easy to determine exactly who was present. But 
one is perfectly safe in concluding that the Cabinet 
met a good many times by itself to arrange matters 
that were later on submitted to Washington’s de¬ 
termining word. 19 When a meeting was unduly pro¬ 
longed, as on Friday, November 8, the principal officers 
dined together and (in this instance) with the Presi¬ 
dent. Meetings were held on any one of the six days 
of the week, with some apparent tendency toward Mon¬ 
days and Saturdays, although I have never found evi¬ 
dence of any such rule. There is no record of a council 
meeting on Sunday during Washington’s entire admin¬ 
istration. 

International affairs and the right method of carry¬ 
ing out the principles of the Neutrality Proclamation, 
as well as the disposition of sundry prize cases, were 
before the , council through the spring and sum¬ 
mer of 1793. Later on, by November, it is clear that 
the subject of the President’s annual message pre¬ 
occupied Washington and his principal officers. Jef¬ 
ferson left the administration on December 31. And 
with his going the council gradually assumed a less 
interesting aspect, although there must have been 
numerous consultations over the Jay Treaty at a 

1@ Such meetings without the President occurred on February 28 
May 16, June 1, July 8, July 30, August 3 and 5. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


107 


later time, in view of the opposition revealed, in Con¬ 
gress and outside, toward England. Hamilton’s influ¬ 
ence remained strong over Washington and is particu¬ 
larly notable at the time, in 1796, when he had decided 
to issue his farewell address. But Jefferson’s figure 
as a statesman disappeared for the time being until it 
was once more promoted to a rather conspicuous place, 
that of Vice-President, in 1797. 

III. 

At this point my materials take me forward to Mon¬ 
roe’s peaceful administration, which opened in March, 
1817, and lasted until the spring of 1825. James Mon¬ 
roe was not a man to cut a heroic figure during his 
time; and it is safe to say that the reader of history 
finds it difficult to recall him. He was fifty-nine years 
old at the outset of his Presidency. His Cabinet con¬ 
tained men of unusual accomplishments and notable 
talents. John Quincy Adams, trained as a diplomat, 
familiar with foreign ways and languages, carefully 
educated, scholarly, widely read—enough of a lawyer 
once to have been offered a seat upon the Supreme 
Court of the United States—high-minded, but not a 
man of winning ways, was appointed Secretary of 
State. He accepted the appointment, undertaking his 
task at the age of fifty—four years older than Jeffer¬ 
son when that statesman had been appointed to the 
same post by Washington. Calhoun, thirty-five years 
old in March, 1817, already a political leader familiar 
from experience with Congressional affairs and of 
great promise, was the youngest counsellor. He ac¬ 
cepted the War portfolio and proved himself, especially 
in the routine of department work and reorganization, 
of conspicuous merit. William H. Crawford of Georgia 


108 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

was Secretary of the Treasury through the eight years. 
For almost the same length of time William Wirt 
acted as Attorney-General, succeeding Richard Rush, 
who was held over a few months from Madison’s term. 
The Navy Secretaryship had three incumbents: B. W. 
Crowninshield, Smith Thompson, who in 1823 went 
from the Cabinet to the Supreme Court, and Samuel L. 
Southard, of New Jersey, who was appointed at the 
age of thirty-six. Both Wirt and Southard were re¬ 
tained by Adams when in 1825 he became President, 
and served in the Cabinet until 1829, Wirt thus com¬ 
pleting a term in the Attorney-Generalship of virtually 
twelve years. 

Monroe had known Madison intimately both in and 
outside the Cabinet. He admired Jefferson, and kept 
up a correspondence with the sage of Monticello after 
his own term as President (in 1817) had begun. Long 
since Monroe had become reconciled to the memory, 
once very hitter, of his recall from France by Wash¬ 
ington, and was even desirous of modeling his admin¬ 
istration on that of the first Virginian President. In 
fact, rather excessive regard for dignity and form— 
the essence of the Washington tradition—was char¬ 
acteristic of the Monroe administration. The Cabinet 
was usually summoned through the Secretary of State 
at the President’s request, notices being issued a day 
or so in advance of the meeting. Occasionally it as¬ 
sembled, however, the very day circumstances required, 
without more than verbal orders. Calhoun or Adams 
or any one of the Secretaries might suggest the desira¬ 
bility of the meeting to the President, and the Cabinet 
was thereupon assembled. “These Cabinet councils,” 
remarked Adams, ‘ 4 open upon me a new scene and new 
views of the political world. Here is a play of passions, 
opinions, and characters different in many respects 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


109 


from those in which I have been accustomed hereto¬ 
fore to move. There is always slowness, want of deci¬ 
sion, and a spirit of procrastination in the Presi¬ 
dent . . .” 20 Indeed, Adams’s Memoirs afford abund¬ 
ant evidence of what may be termed a slow-gaited ad¬ 
ministration. Returning to his office about 3 o’clock 
one afternoon in February, 1819, after attending de¬ 
bates in the Senate and House of Representatives, the 
Secretary of State found a note from the President 
delivered by a messenger and requesting him to sum¬ 
mon the Cabinet at the President’s house on that day 
at 1:30 p. m. 21 It must have been true of many a meet¬ 
ing which lasted three or four hours that—as Adams 
pointedly says—‘ 4 conversation burned out.” 22 

Adams’s Memoirs, which constitute a detailed record 
but now and then reveal weeks and months of omis¬ 
sions, give evidence of about 180 meetings of the Cabi¬ 
net over Monroe’s eight years. Meetings were held 
with no uniformity, but on any one of the six weekdays. 
Sunday meetings were occasional, but very unusual. 
Over the eight years there is a slight preponderance 
of Tuesday-Friday sessions; but there was no such 
rule, I think, established. The Cabinet met “at the 
President’s,” occasionally in the office of the Secretary 
of the Treasury, once in Smith Thompson’s office 
(Navy Department). At the close of sessions of Con¬ 
gress, the President and his assistants assembled in 
the Vice-President’s room at the Cjapitol. Twelve 
o’clock (noon) or one o’clock was the customary hour 
of the meetings. They were concluded as a rule by 
four p. m. Monroe dined in the late afternoon, prob¬ 
ably about five o’clock. In the case of a few very pro- 

20 January 9, 1818. Memoirs, IV, 37. 

21 Memoirs, IV, 245. February 5, Friday. 

“Ibid. IV, 168. Saturday, November 7, 1818. 



110 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

longed meetings, the Cabinet dined with the President 
and even discussed business after dinner into the 
night. In the latter part of July, 1818, the Cabinet met 
for six consecutive consultations on as many days, 
Sunday alone interrupting the strict continuity of the 
sessions. The chief topic was Andrew Jackson and 
his actions in Florida. 23 There are two meetings that 
for length deserve especially to be recalled: those of 
Monday and Tuesday, June 21-22, 1824. The first of 
these opened at 9:30 a. m. and was concluded about 7 
p. m. The second meeting lasted from 8 a. m. to 9:30 
p. m. “with the interval of about an hour to dine, which 
we did at the President’s. . . .” 24 The case before the 
council on the two days was that of Ninian Edwards, 
first Senator from the new State of Illinois and at the 
time Minister to Mexico, who, on reaching New Orleans 
on the way there, had been recalled in consequence of 
charges brought against him by Crawford, Secretary 
of the Treasury. Edwards had attacked Crawford for 
the purpose of interfering with Crawford’s chances for 
the Presidency. The attack embittered Crawford and 
so affected him that the Secretary of the Treasury 
must have been rather a useless counsellor for the 
remainder of the administration, for his aspirations 
brought him into real antagonism with both Calhoun 
and Adams. 24a About this time the National Intelli¬ 
gencer was so pronounced in its advocacy of Craw¬ 
ford’s ambition that the rest of the Cabinet determined 
to lend favor to the National Journal, for a time well 
known and edited by Peter Force. 

As happened in Washington’s time, the Cabinet 
occasionally met without, or in the absence of, the 

23 Memoirs, IV, 107-114. July 15-21, 1818. 

2i lUd. VI, 389 ff. 

24 aCrawford was present at not a single session of the Cabinet 
from April to November 10, 1824. Memoirs , VI, 426. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. Ill 

President. 25 On rare occasions the chairman of a Con¬ 
gressional committee might attend a Cabinet session. 
But the council’s affairs were naturally regarded as 
essentially private and not to he divulged. On Janu¬ 
ary 5, 1822, Postmaster-General R. J. Meigs was sum¬ 
moned to a Cabinet meeting—the first clear instance 
of this that I have discovered, for the Postmaster- 
General was not yet a member by custom of the Cabi¬ 
net. Careful written queries as in Washington’s time 
were now and then introduced into a Cabinet meeting 
by President Monroe. If these were constitutional 
questions, the President at times asked for written 
opinions from members other than the Attorney-Gen¬ 
eral. Some of these opinions in March, 1820, over the 
Missouri situation, involving the problem of slavery, 
were deposited in the Department of State at Monroe’s 
request. 26 

The years of the administration were sufficiently full 
of difficulties, both of a domestic and foreign nature, 
to call into activity the able powers of Monroe’s assist¬ 
ants. Adams considered that his two really important 
contributions to this portion of his time were the treaty 
with Spain which gave us Florida and his report on 
weights and measures. He was the author of the Mon¬ 
roe Doctrine. In most respects he was the dominant 
man in the Cabinet, as he was the oldest and most 
experienced. Little enough is there in the record of 
either Crowninshield or Smith Thompson. Southard 
was an intimate friend of Wirt and appreciated Adams 
sufficiently to be able to work with him through the 

26 Wednesday, March 31; Friday, April 2, 1819; Saturday, January 
22, 1820. 

20 For instances of strangers at Cabinet sessions, see Memoirs 
under dates: January 7, 1819; January 5, 1822; May 26, 1824. “Had 
Congress a Constitutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory?” 
was one of the questions on which opinions were written and de¬ 
posited in the State Department. Memoirs , V, 5 ff. 



112 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

next four years. Calhoun went to the Vice-Presidency 
in 1825—to reappear many years later as Secretary of 
State under Tyler. 

IV. 

Although Monroe tried hard to get a western man 
into his council, he was unsuccessful. Henry Clay, 
aged forty-eight when he accepted the headship of the 
Department of State under Adams in March, 1825, 
was the first Westerner to enter the Cabinet. Both 
Wirt, the Attorney-General, and James Barbour, Sec¬ 
retary of War, were his seniors by a few years. South¬ 
ard, Secretary of the Navy—like Wirt, inherited by 
Adams from the Monroe Cabinet—was the youngest 
member, aged thirty-eight. Richard Rush, arriving 
in mid-summer, assumed the Treasury portfolio, 
though he would have been glad to exchange it with 
Southard for that of the Navy. There was one change 
in the personnel during the four-year term: Barbour 
was replaced as Secretary of War by Peter B. Porter, 
of New York, in 1828. The average age of the Cabinet 
was forty-eight years—compared to forty years, the 
average of Washington’s counsellors. President 
Adams went so far as to ask Crawford to remain at 
the head of the Treasury. This Crawford was disin¬ 
clined to do. Had he succeeded, in accordance with 
his real desires, in getting Gallatin to accept the place, 
he would have had two first-rate figures in his council 
instead of only one. 

President Adams’s Cabinet met relatively with de¬ 
cidedly less frequency than Monroe’s, if the records 
of the Memoirs may be trusted. The President was 
much inclined to settle as much business as possible in 
conference with this or that member of the Secretariat 
alone. The reasons for this conference method were 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


118 


partly due to the lack of any very moving issues either 
in domestic or foreign affairs. The Panama Congress 
was a notable consideration early in the administra¬ 
tion, and the Tariff—chiefly in the hands of Congress— 
was conspicuous from 1827 onwards. Careful atten¬ 
tion was given by the council to the annual messages 
every autumn, and Novembers revealed thirteen— 
exactly one-fifth of the total meetings recorded: viz., 
sixty-five. We are left with no precise statements as 
to the ordinary meeting place, but it is reasonable to 
assume that the Cabinet met as a rule at the Executive 
Mansion, except when Adams accompanied his coun¬ 
sellors to the Vice-President’s chamber at the Capitol 
at the close of sessions. The hour of meetings was 
apt to be one o’clock p. m. and the time of concluding 
them was five p. m. Evening sessions of the council 
were rare. Again there is no evidence of regular days; 
but the Cabinet is not recorded as meeting at all on 
Sunday. About a fifth of the recorded meetings oc¬ 
curred on Mondays, and the same proportion on Satur¬ 
days, but almost as many are found to have occurred 
on Wednesdays. The President dined about five p. m. 
and considered the next two hours daily to be rela¬ 
tively leisurely. 

Now and then the Cabinet met without the Presi¬ 
dent, on one occasion deliberately asking to be left 
to itself. It was in November, 1826, when the subject 
of the message was before them. This is Adams’s 
statement. The Secretariat, he says, asked that— 

“the draft of the message when prepared might be sent to 
the members of the administration, to be considered by them 
without my being present; that the discussion might be more 
free than would be respectful in my presence. I said I saw 
no material objection to this. . .” 27 


27 Memoirs , VII, 190-192. 



114 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

It is rather surprising, in view of Adams’s well-known 
care in the regulations of his own daily existence, to 
discover that he treated somewhat casually the matter 
of an occasional council meeting. In February, 1828, 
definite word of a Cabinet session had gone forth for 
Friday, the 15th instant, at one o’clock. Finding that 
Governor Barbour had a wedding that day at his house, 
the meeting was accordingly postponed to the follow¬ 
ing day, Saturday. Learning on Saturday morning 
that, in view of the adjournment of the House of Rep¬ 
resentatives, the hall of the House was to be used “for 
the exhibition of the deaf and dumb teachers and 
pupils,” President Adams at noon walked to the 
Capitol— 

“leaving directions at home that if the members of the Ad¬ 
ministration should come at one, to ask them to wait a short 
time for my return from the Capitol, and ordered my 
carriage to be there for me at one.” 

The exhibition of the deaf and dumb proved so thor¬ 
oughly absorbing to the President that he remained 
at the Capitol throughout the three hours of the exer¬ 
cises. Vice-President Calhoun was also there, and 
Mr. Speaker Stevenson. Both of these gentlemen in¬ 
terrogated the pupils. Then President Adams, as he 
tells us in all seriousness in his record of the day, asked 
a few questions: 

“I asked Mr. Gallaudet if he could make them [the pupils] 
understand the difference between irrefragable and incon¬ 
trovertible. He said he could not immediately discern the 
distinction between them himself. ... I desired the ques¬ 
tion to be put them if they knew the figure over the clock 
in the hall; but they did not. Afterwards I enquired if they 
could tell the name of the Muse of History. One of them 
said he had forgotten it; but the question still did not sug¬ 
gest to him that it was the figure over the clock. . . .” 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


115 


Soon-after this the President named Plato as a subject 
fit for a brief sketch. He was apparently pleased when 
a pupil ‘ ‘ immediately wrote down a short account of 
his life, death and writings.” When the President 
reached home Clay, Barbour, and Southard had long 
since departed. As a sort of consolatory item he re¬ 
marks that Wirt “came afterwards, and I had a very 
long conversation with him about the Cherokee Con¬ 
stitution and the Indian titles to lands.” The Cabinet 
was finally assembled on the following Tuesday, Feb¬ 
ruary 19, at one o ’clock. 28 Let us hope that no one was 
peevish or out of temper with Presidential dilatori¬ 
ness! 

There are several indications that when men ab¬ 
sented themselves from Cabinet sessions, they sent 
excuses or apologized for failures to attend. 29 On one 
occasion Adams declined to allow Wirt to escape from 
a meeting, 80 although it is clear that the Attorneys- 
General of most of the early Cabinets were much less 
regular in attendance than the Secretaries. Toward 
the close of his term Adams felt some lack of harmony 
in his council. Clay threatened to resign, and Barbour 
(who was not highly regarded by the President) left 
the Cabinet. In connection with Barbour’s going, it 
is interesting to discover that Adams yielded to the 
views of his Cabinet in the matter of Porter’s substi¬ 
tution. He would himself have much preferred to ap¬ 
point a certain John Williams, of Tennessee, to the 
War Department. But in order, as he says, “to termi¬ 
nate the administration in harmony with itself” he 
named General Peter Buel Porter, a hero of the War 

88 Memoirs , VII, 434-442 (passim). 

« Memoirs , VI, 54 (November 16, 1825); VII, 444 (February 22, 
1828). 

"Ibid., VII, 235 (March 6, 1827). 



116 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

of 1812, once appointed Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army by James Madison. 31 

But Adams was quite able to take a stand inde¬ 
pendent of most of his Cabinet; and this stand he took 
in the problem, very embittered in its day, of the 
successor as Major-General and Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army to General Brown, who died on February 
24, 1828. The matter was under consideration by the 
Cabinet for nearly two months. Four candidates for 
the position were named, everyone of whom had sturdy 
advocates: Scott, Gaines, Macomb and Harrison. 

. . upon whichever of the four the choice may be 
fixed,** wrote Adams, “there will be great clamor from 
the friends of all the others, and from the adversaries 
of the Administration generally. * m At the decisive 
moment a Cabinet council assembled, April 14, 1828 
(Monday). The claims of the four candidates were 
canvassed, “their merits critically scanned, their de¬ 
fects freely noticed, and their comparative pretensions 
weighed. They so nearly balanced one another that 
every member of the Administration had much diffi¬ 
culty in coming to a decided preference. Mr. Clay, 
Governor Barbour, Mr. Southard, and Mr. Wirt finally 
and somewhat indecisively joined their voices in favor 
of Scott; Mr. Rush more positively preferring Macomb, 
with which my own opinion concurred. I attributed 
the preference of Scott to a feeling of which these 
gentlemen were probably themselves not conscious— 
the Virginian sympathy. Mr. Clay had also Western 
biases inclining him towards Harrison; but he would 
not allow that Gaines was from Tennessee, or that 
Tennessee was a Western State. There was not one 


"Ibid., VIII, 4-5 (May 20, 1828). 
32 Memoirs , VII, 505. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


117 


voice for Gaines. . . .” 33 Adams appointed Macomb. 
Rush never forgot as long as he lived that he was the 
single member of the council in accord with the Presi¬ 
dent, and years later—on Tuesday, January 19, 1847— 
he told Polk, at the moment concerned over a similar 
problem, the story of this Cabinet meeting and of his 
share in it. 34 

President John Quincy Adams went out of office in 
rather an embittered mood. On Tuesday, March 3, 
after a busy time at the Capitol, he took leave of all 
his advisers but Clay. That night at nine o’clock he 
left the President’s house, having already determined 
with the aid of the advice of his counsellors to have 
nothing whatever to do with the inauguration cere¬ 
monies of his successor, Andrew Jackson. He was the 
last of six men nurtured in the East and in revolution¬ 
ary-day surroundings to administer the Presidency. 
Like his predecessors, he had done much to help es¬ 
tablish certain forms in accordance with the Wash¬ 
ington tradition which could hardly be forgotten or 
quite ignored, although men of a different type touched 
by other ideals were to be in the saddle. 

V. 

The epoch of James K. Polk was exciting. Questions 
of expansion and slavery were much discussed along 
with the military features of the Mexican War. The 
recent publication of Polk’s Diary —a work which ap¬ 
peared about sixty years after his untimely death in 
June, 1849,—is likely to do service in quickening inter¬ 
est in the man; and will, I think, raise him in estimate 
among historians. For glimpses of nearly 400 Cabinet 


"Ibid., VII, 506-507. 
S4 Polk’s Diary, II, 342-344. 



118 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

sessions it is quite a unique record. In fact, it is 
doubtful if a single meeting of the Cabinet from August 
26, 1845, to Sunday, March 4, 1849, went unrecorded 
in it. There is some entry, however brief, every day 
that Polk occupied the Executive Mansion from August 
26, when the Diary was first begun. And a Cabinet 
session is invariably noted, sometimes with very care¬ 
ful detail. 

Polk was forty-nine years old when he came to the 
Presidency in March, 1845—the youngest incumbent of 
the great office up to his time. Just before he reached 
his forty-third birthday (in October, 1901) Theodore 
Roosevelt fell heir to the same office. Polk was a Ten¬ 
nessee Democrat, friend of Andrew Jackson and a 
great admirer of Thomas Jefferson. His experience 
in the national House of Representatives—for a time 
as Speaker—had been long and honorable, and very 
industrious. Nominated to the Presidency as a “dark 
horse” largely because of his pronouncements in favor 
of a policy of territorial expansion, he and Dallas as 
Vice-President carried the country by no very sub¬ 
stantial popular vote against Clay and Frelinghuysen. 
Polk’s Cabinet contained three men of large ability: 
the oldest, William Learned Marcy, a former governor 
of New York, at the age of fifty-eight accepted the 
head of the War Department; James Buchanan at 
the age of fifty-four accepting the State Department, 
proving very troublesome to Polk because of sundry 
disagreements and especially because of political am¬ 
bition to succeed to the Presidency in 1849; and Robert 
J. Walker of Mississippi, Secretary of the Treasury, 
aged forty-four, five years Polk’s junior. The other 
members of the Cabinet} were George Bancroft of 
Massachusetts, Secretary of the Navy, succeeded in 
1846 by John Y. Mason of Virginia; Nathan Clifford 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


119 


of Maine, Attorney-General, who was replaced in that 
position by Isaac Toucey of Connecticut, and Cave 
Johnson of Tennessee, Postmaster-General. 

One of the most marked features of the term was the 
intimacy—evident on almost every page of the Diary — 
that was kept up between the President and party 
leaders in both the House and the Senate. Even the 
aged Calhoun was admitted early in 1846 to a session 
of the Cabinet. 35 Senator Benton throughout the first 
two years of the administration was many times in con¬ 
ference with Polk, as was Senator Cass in the latter 
years. Vice-President Dallas often was consulted by 
Polk, although there is no evidence that he ever at¬ 
tended a session of the Council. Thomas Ritchie, edi¬ 
tor of the Union , was carefully consulted on various 
occasions and allowed presidential secrets to slip into 
his partisan publication, at times much to President 
Polk’s disgust. We get glimpses of the figure of 
Andrew Johnson flitting in and out of the Executive 
Mansion even thus early—distrusted and disliked by 
Polk. Johnson and his Tennessee colleagues, remarked 
Polk, 4 ‘seem to assume to themselves the right to judge 
of the appointments in Tennessee, and to denounce 
them among members of Congress and in boarding 
houses as though they were responsible for them. I 
think it fortunate,” he continues, “that they have now 
learned that their course has not been unobserved by 
me. ’’ 3fl Polk went so far as himself to outline an article 
for Ritchie’s Union even more than once: 

“It is the second or third time since I have been President 
that I have sketched an article for the paper. I did so in 
this instance to allay if possible the excitement which I 
learned the article in yesterday’s Union had produced. . .” 3T 


™Diary, I, 161. January 10. 

"Ibid., II, 41. July 21, 1846. 
"Ibid., I, 351-352. April 24, 1846. 



120 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

There were numerous outsiders admitted at odd times 
to Cabinet sessions, usually for the sake of giving spe¬ 
cial information either about the progress of the War 
or other matters nearer home. Among these note may 
be made of Brigadier-General Kearny 38 and Major- 
General Shields, 89 Mayor Seaton of Washington, 40 
Thomas G. Clemson, son-in-law to Calhoun and re¬ 
cently returned from Belgium where he had served as 
charge d’affaires 41 and Senator Jarnagin and Repre¬ 
sentative Wheaton as members of the committee on 
enrolled bills. 42 Nicholas Trist, clerk in the State De¬ 
partment, was summoned into one session for the sake 
of translating a Spanish letter. 43 Polk’s private secre¬ 
tary, J. Knox Walker, was often in the room during 
Cabinet meetings. 44 

Has there, it may be asked, been any President since 
1789 who stuck so steadily to his job as did President 
Polk? Polk was very particular to indicate to all his 
advisers at the outset of his term that he expected 
none of them to leave Washington for slight reasons or 
for any length of time while they served him. He had 
decided convictions against the practice of entrusting 
affairs to chief clerks. As for himself during the en¬ 
tire four-year period, Polk was not outside Washing¬ 
ton for more than about six weeks. How many Presi¬ 
dents, it may be asked, have confined themselves to 
vacations of ten days a year? Polk spent a day at 
Mt. Vernon in the spring of 1845 (before the Diary 

88 Diary. Ill, 168. September 12, 1847. 

"Ibid., Ill, 261. December 28, 1847. 

"Ibid., IV, 125. September 19, 1848. 

"Ibid., IV, 196. November 14, 1848. 

"Ibid., I, 47, 51. July 25, 1846. 

"Ibid., II, 432. March 20, 1847. 

"Ibid., II, 486. April 22, 1847. “. . . my Private Secretary is often 
in the room when the Cabinet is in session and he is the only per¬ 
son except the Cabinet who is so.” 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 121 

opens) ; 45 late in August, 1846, for about a week he was 
at Old Point Comfort; in May-June, 1847, he was on a 
visit of nine days to the University of North Carolina, 
of which he was a graduate; he went for a fortnights 
tour to New England to attend a Masonic celebration in 
June-July, 1847; and finally in the late summer (Au¬ 
gust) of 1848 he was for ten days at Bedford Springs, 
Pennsylvania. There were no other absences from the 
seat of government. Moreover there was no cessa¬ 
tion of cabinet meetings while he was in Washington 
from the August when the Diary opens. The regularity 
of Cabinet sessions, regular and “special,” becomes 
positively irksome in the record. But in this respect 
Polk’s theory and practices were in perfect accord. 
Listen to his words: 

“No President who performs his duty faithfully and con¬ 
scientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details 
and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will 
occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the 
Government myself rather than entrust the public business 
to subordinates and this makes my duties very great.” 46 

This was not idle sentiment on Polk’s part, as the 
record of his administration clearly proves. But he 
was ill at times during his last year (1848), and one 
may reasonably conclude that he was suffering from 
his incessant and tireless labors. 

There is a passage in the Life and Correspondence 
of John A. Quitman 47 which, besides error, contains 
some elements of truth at this point worth noting. 
Polk, says Quitman’s biographer, 

“was a political martinet, a rigid disciplinarian. ... He 
was a man of ability, but a man of expediency. . . Polk was 
grave almost to sadness, self-restrained, and chilling. . . 

45 Diary, II, 87. 

IV, 261. December 29, 1848. 

"I, 228-235 (passim). 



122 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

(He) was indebted for his elevation to his energy, his cir¬ 
cumspection, his capacity for labor, his fidelity to party, 
and, more than all, to the influence of Gen. Jackson. . . He 
had a vigorous and able cabinet—one of the ablest ever 
assembled around any executive. . . . but he can be regarded 
as a man of mediocrity. . . exempt from positive vices, re¬ 
markable for his prudence, and a thorough master of the 
strategy of politics. . . He, nevertheless, in four years, wit¬ 
nessed the decay of his popularity, and no one but himself 
dreamed of his re-election.” 

It may be questioned whether 4 ‘mediocrity’’ is to be 
lightly applied to this President who stands out con¬ 
spicuously between Jackson on the one side and Lincoln 
on the other. He certainly did not “dream” of or 
wish to be reelected to the office of President. In 
other respects the passage is discerning and probably 
fair. 

Whether Polk was the first President to introduce 
regularity into Cabinet sessions I do not feel altogether 
certain, for as yet I have had no time to examine into 
the practices of the Cabinet during the Jackson-Van 
Buren-Tyler terms. But Polk’s Cabinet met as a rule 
every week throughout the year, if the President was 
not himself away from Washington: on Tuesdays and 
Saturdays at eleven a. m. in the forenoon. In one 
year alone—1846, during which war with Mexico was 
begun—the Council met about 114 times. In 1848, the 
year which closed treaty negotiations, there were ap¬ 
proximately 120 meetings of the Cabinet. As I reckon 
it through the Diary evidence, there were 173 meetings 
on Tuesdays and about 168 meetings on Saturdays. All 
others, about 50, known as “special” meetings, were 
summoned on any one of the other days of the week. It 
was against Polk’s strict Sabbatarian views to summon 
the Cabinet to Sunday sessions, but occasionally he 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


123 


found it necessary to do so, although against his will. 
He never willingly missed attendance at church at 
eleven o’clock Sunday mornings. The regular ses¬ 
sions of the Cabinet were seldom over before two p. m. 
Many meetings can be found sitting as late as three or 
four o’clock. Polk’s regular dinner-hour came at four. 
Evening consultations were occasional. Four and five 
hour sessions were termed long. Now and again when 
the President was indisposed Cabinet meetings had to 
be omitted. The laying of the corner-stone of the 
Smithsonian Institution and the public funeral of John 
Quincy Adams were among incidents that made it seem 
fitting to omit meetings of the Council. 

Unlike the meetings of Adams’s Cabinet, which were 
devoted to a few rather specific problems and were not 
frequent or at all regular, those of Polk were usually 
alive with variety of business and discussion. The 
epoch was alert. Its problems—especially those which 
were generated by the Oregon question and the War— 
were grave and complicated, burdened) with conse¬ 
quences of a doubtful kind. Large subjects inevitably 
came before the Council: the tariff, Texas, Oregon, Cal¬ 
ifornia, slavery, army troubles, most of which de¬ 
manded the enunciation of more or less definite execu¬ 
tive policy and attitude. But on the other hand there 
were numerous matters of minor, if not of petty sig¬ 
nificance : the Cabinet heard much political gossip and 
discussed it; it watched observantly the proceedings of 
Congress, and guided itself to some extent by what it 
observed. Polk and his advisers, especially Buchanan 
ambitious himself for the Presidency when he found 
that he could not easily get to the Supreme Court, 
scanned carefully many newspaper criticisms, and even 
attempted to dictate to sundry newspapers. The sub¬ 
ject of office-seeking politicians, haunting Polk day and 


124 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

night throughout his term, could not help coming at 
times into conciliar discussion. The four annual mes¬ 
sages, prepared by Polk promptly and with remarkable 
care, were not only submitted to the Cabinet but to men 
of influence and discretion outside that body—to Vice- 
President Dallas, Editor Ritchie, Senators Benton and 
Cass and many others. The fourth and last message 
of Polk which, among presidential papers, must be 
reckoned remarkable always and was clearly deemed 
by Polk as his valedictory word to his Democratic fol¬ 
lowers as well as to the nation, was given slow and 
long attention. The President yielded his convictions 
neither easily nor as a rule for petty reasons. Politics 
influenced him. But he seldom forgot principles even 
though he had to sacrifice the friendship and influ¬ 
ence of men as powerful as Senator Benton of Missouri 
and to some extent the assistance of Buchanan. A less 
prudent and sagacious man would probably have failed 
to hold through the administration three such ambi¬ 
tious and able advisers as Buchanan, Marcy, and 
Walker, for at one time or another they were all ready 
to abandon their places. 

Votes in Cabinet sessions were exceedingly rare. 48 
Like most Presidents before and since his time, Polk 
asked now and then for written opinions on technical 
matters of law from his Attorneys-General. 49 But he 
never seems to have taken written opinions from the 
rest of his counsellors. On this point his own words 
are conclusive. He wrote: 

“I have never called for any written opinions from my 
Cabinet, preferring to take their opinions, after a discussion 
in Cabinet & in presence of each other. In this way harmony 
of opinion is more likely to exist. . . ” 50 

48 Diary , III, 281. 

"Ibid., II, 79. IV, 202. 

M Ibid ., IV, 131. September 23, 1848. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 125 

Thus a practice begun by Washington and peculiarly 
characteristic of the first President was willfully on 
Polk’s part abandoned. 

Polk would have liked to engage Franklin Pierce of 
New Hampshire as his Attorney-General in place of 
John Y. Mason transferred to the Navy portfolio on 
Bancroft’s departure in 1846. 51 He yielded to his Coun- 
cil’s wishes, on Pierce’s declining the place, naming 
Peter Vroom of New Jersey. When Vroom likewise 
declined, Polk got his second choice for the position in 
the person of Isaac Toucey of Connecticut, many years 
later Buchanan’s Secretary of the Navy and predeces¬ 
sor of Gideon Welles. In some respects the case was 
parallel to President Adams’s decision to accept Gen¬ 
eral Peter B. Porter as his second Secretary of War in 
succession to Governor Barbour. 

When in the spring of 1847 Polk was disturbed over 
questions of precedence among army officers and other 
similar matters, Richard Rush, then an elderly man of 
sixty-five and about to undertake his duties as minister 
to France—once Attorney-General under Madison and 
later (as I have pointed out) Secretary of the Treasury 
under John Quincy Adams—spent the late evening of 
Tuesday, January 19th, with Polk. The President 
took keen delight in talking with Rush, and recorded 
this recollection of Rush in his Diary. Polk wrote: 

“He gave me a very interesting account of the appointment 
of a General-in-chief of the army upon the death of Maj’r 
Gen’l Brown. He said that Gen’l (s) Gaines & Scott had 
both written very exceptionable & violent letters to the 
President, each claiming the office, the one by virtue of his 
lineal & the other of his Brevet rank. He said that Mr. Clay 
was warmly in favour of Gen’l Scott; that Messrs. Barbour, 
Southard, & Wirt also expressed a preference for Gen’l 


II, 102. August 27, 1846. 



126 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

Scott. He said that for himself he had been silent during 
the discussions, which had occasionally taken place during a 
period of more than six weeks, but that finally his opinion 
was asked in Cabinet by the President & he gave it in favour 
of Gen’l Macomb, upon the ground that he thought neither 
Gaines nor Scott ought to be appointed after the very ex¬ 
ceptionable letters which they had written. The President 
(Mr. Adams) who had never before expressed an opinion, 
Mr. Rush said, upon hearing his opinion in favour of Gen’] 
Macomb straightened himself up in his seat, and in his 
peculiar manner said ‘and I think so too.’ Mr. Rush said 
this was unexpected and produced great astonishment in the 
Cabinet, and came very near breaking up the Cabinet. He 
said as the members of the Cabinet retired, on the walk 
from the President’s mansion Mr. Clay was vehement on the 
subject, and expressed warmly the opinion that they could 
not get along under such treatment from the President. He 
said he interposed to allay the excitement & advised moder¬ 
ation. The President appointed Gen’l Macomb and the 
matter here ended.” 52 

In all essential details this account, in comparison with 
the record of Adams’s Memoirs of Monday, April 14, 
1828, appears to be correct, although slightly elabor¬ 
ated. It shows how clear an impression of a sensa¬ 
tional Cabinet session nineteen years before remained 
in Rush’s memory. Moreover, it is a real piece of evi¬ 
dence of Polk’s ability to reproduce accurately the 
essential points of a conversation with a comparative 
stranger. 

In concluding this account of Polk’s Cabinet meet¬ 
ings, attention should be called to a matter of policy 
extending over many sessions of the Council in which 
Polk showed his independence and principle. It may 
not be at once recalled that there was a widespread and 
vigorous movement in 1847-48, led by a number of 


B2 Diary, II, 343-344. See supra, pp. 116-117. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 127 

prominent politicians, to force Polk to the task of ab¬ 
sorbing the whole of Mexico. That we escaped annex¬ 
ing all of Mexico in 1848 was due to some variety of 
causes. But not the least of these was that President 
Polk effectually controlled the policy of this govern¬ 
ment in spite of several intimate assistants, such as 
Buchanan and R. J. Walker, who would have had him 
reject the treaty negotiated by Nicholas Trist in ac¬ 
cordance with Polk’s instructions given him in April, 
1847, at the time when Trist was sent on a treaty-mak¬ 
ing mission. 53 

By the time that Polk was ready to leave office in 
1849 the Cabinet was a thoroughly well-established and 
matured institution. That he had done a good deal to 
fix certain customs I am inclined to believe; he was a 
stickler for regularity in administrative practices—re¬ 
markably vigilant in keeping himself and his intimate 
assistants at work throughout the four-year term. It 
may safely be conjectured that the Cabinet never met 
without the President. Moreover we probably know 
with a rare degree of precision what was said and done 
at many of these sessions. As the President kept his 
hand on a great many matters, so he often was pre¬ 
pared to be the real director of discussions and the 
author of the administration’s attitude or policy so far 
as the executive department was concerned. He had 
several conspicuously able assistants about him. Nev¬ 
ertheless, if one may trust impressions gathered largely 
from the Diary, he was never overpowered by any one 
of these able men. It is the President who at length 
dominates the situation by his ability to grasp its de- 

*•1 have hastened over this paragraph in view of the detailed and 
careful consideration given to this phase of my subject by the late 
Professor E. G. Bourne. See his Essays in Historical Criticism 
(1901), pp. 226 ff. “The Proposed Absorption of Mexico in 1847-1848,” 
Mr. Bourne made use of Polk’s Diary, at the time in MS. 



128 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 


tails and, though aided by others, to understand it. In 
the Cabinet Council Polk was the unmistakable guide 
and master. Ceremonies he disliked; but he cherished 
such forms as aided him and his colleagues in getting 
things done. The fact that Mrs. Dolly Madison and 
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton were not unfamiliar figures 
in presidential circles in the national Capital during 
the administration may serve to suggest that the execu¬ 
tive part of the government was still influenced to some 
extent by ideals and practices of an earlier day. Sol¬ 
emn and serious as Polk undoubtedly was, over-worked 
and something of a martinet, he remains as the most 
interesting figure in the Presidency between Andrew 
Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. 

VI. 

Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet, composed of seven members 
(including a Secretary of the Interior in accordance 
with the establishment of such an office in 1849—Caleb 
Smith of Indiana), averaged in ages men of about 
fifty-five. Lincoln himself was but fifty-two when he 
undertook his great task in March, 1861. Edward 
Bates of Missouri, Attorney-General, was sixty-eight 
years old—the oldest member of the Council. Simon 
Cameron who left the headship of the War Depart¬ 
ment in January, 1862, to be succeeded then by Edwin 
M. Stanton, was sixty-two. Seward was sixty. Most 
of the other cabinet associates were under sixty. Mont¬ 
gomery Blair of Maryland, Postmaster-General, Stan¬ 
ton, Dennison of Ohio and J. P. Usher, successor to the 
inconsequential Smith—the last two entering the Cabi¬ 
net long after its first organization—were under fifty. 
Seward and Chase, both of whom had been aspirants 
for the chief office, were naturally the conspicuous fig¬ 
ures—able men destined to leave a mark in history. Of 


Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 


129 


the others, Stanton, Welles, and Fessenden were force¬ 
ful, although no one of these last made much of an 
appeal to the popular imagination. 

Whether by chance or by reason of a precedent 
slightly different from that set by the Polk practice and 
adopted sometime between 1849 and 1861, Lincoln’s 
Cabinet adopted soon after its early and irregular 
meetings the Tuesday-Friday rule for regular sessions. 
Welles’s Diary affords glimpses of about 166 Cabinet 
meetings between July, 1862, and April 14, 1865. The 
sessions of the Cabinet during 1863 and 1864 were cer¬ 
tainly frequent on the regular days, “special” meet¬ 
ings being summoned on most any other day of the 
week except Sunday. Now and then Sunday meetings 
occurred; but there are, I think, only six meetings re¬ 
corded as taking place on Sunday during the Lincoln- 
Johnson period, from 1862 to 1869. Neither Lincoln 
nor Johnson revealed any Sabbatarian opposition to 
such assemblings of the Council. 

In March, 1861, the variety of personal elements 
brought suddenly into close proximity, the chaotic ad¬ 
ministrative conditions left as a heritage to his succes¬ 
sor by Buchanan, and the peculiar outward circum¬ 
stances of the political situation made the process of 
adjustment between Lincoln and his advisers certain 
to be slow and likely to be difficult. “Few compara¬ 
tively know or can appreciate,” wrote Welles, “the 
actual condition of things and state of feeling of the 
members of the administration in those days. Nearly 
sixty years of peace had unfitted us for any war; but 
the most terrible of all wars—a civil one—was upon 
us and it had to be met. Congress had adjourned with¬ 
out making any provision for the storm, though aware 
it was at hand and soon to burst upon the country. A 
new administration, scarcely acquainted with each 


130 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

other, and differing essentially in the past, was com¬ 
pelled to act, promptly and decisively. ’ ,54 
Of the earliest cabinet meetings the Secretary of 
the Navy has this to say: 

“Cabinet-meetings, which should, at that exciting and inter¬ 
esting period, have been daily, were infrequent, irregular, 
and without system. The Secretary of State notified his 
associates when the President desired a meeting of the heads 
of Departments. It seemed unadvisable to the Premier—as 
he liked to be called and considered—that the members 
should meet often, and they did not. Consequently there 
was very little concerted action.” 55 

Seward, we are informed, was invariably present be¬ 
fore the gatherings of the counsellors and assumed the 
leading place, mindful no doubt of his familiarity with 
and experience in affairs of state from the days of his 
governorship to his work as Senator from the most 
conspicuous state in the Union. He failed, however, to 
impress either the President or his colleagues with his 
knowledge of the demands of the new situation. It was 
not long before his arrogant assumption of power and 
his actions became among members of the Cabinet mat¬ 
ters of common gossip. Bates of Missouri, the elderly 
Attorney-General, and Chase of the Treasury Depart¬ 
ment expressed themselves openly in Council on the 
subject of the desultory discussions, the lack of sys¬ 
tem, and of that concert and comity which should pre¬ 
vail in a really strong administration. There was ap¬ 
parently no set hour for Cabinet sessions. No seats 
were assigned. Outsiders appeared—a miscellaneous 
variety whose advice promised to be useful. In brief, 
without any rules or regulations, general disorder pre¬ 
vailed. 56 

54 Diary of Gideon Welles (1911), I, 549. March 30, 1864. 

K Diary, I, 136. September 16, 1862. 

66 Ibid I, 136-138. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 131 

The form of proceedings was at length considered. 
Lincoln was modest, inexperienced, doubtful. But he 
was sagacious enough to concentrate results, “and 
often determined questions adversely to the Secretary 
of State, taking Seward’s opinions as well as those of 
the others for what they were worth and generally no 
more.” Bates, perhaps prompted by the President, 
suggested that Cabinet sessions be held on stated days. 
Special calls, he thought, might be issued if business 
or exceptional circumstances demanded them. It was 
the impression of several advisers that high appoint¬ 
ments, hitherto made by the heads separately, should 
be matters for general consultation. Seward and 
Chase in particular—the latter having very extensive 
patronage under his control—had settled sundry ap¬ 
pointments with the President alone, and perhaps oc¬ 
casionally on their own independent judgments. ‘ 4 Each 
of these gentlemen had high aspirations. Each had 
been chief Executive of his State. Each had repre¬ 
sented his state in the Senate, and each had a distinct 
party position and, to some extent, a personal follow¬ 
ing.” 57 It was no doubt natural that they should both 
consider themselves in the light of privileged charac¬ 
ters. At any rate they did so. 

The circumstances of the period between April 12— 
the day that Sumter was attacked—and the assembling 
of the special session of Congress on July 4, 1861, 
brought into operation a new principle, that of a tem¬ 
porary dictatorship. “All the powers of government 
were virtually concentrated in a single department, and 
that the department whose energies were directed by 
the will of a single man.” 58 Inevitably these circum- 

B7 G. Welles, Lincoln and Seward (1874), p. 48. 

M W. A. Dunning, Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction 
(1898), pp. 20-21. 



132 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

stances had, it may be assumed, much to do with setting 
in order and quickening what may be termed the ma¬ 
chinery of the Cabinet. Cabinet meetings began to be 
held with greater frequency. The Cabinet helped to 
formulate numerous executive orders and plans which 
were the means of putting into operation the war pow¬ 
ers of the President. Confronted by vast responsibil¬ 
ity, the Cabinet issued papers and accomplished acts 
that might, under ordinary circumstances, have 
brought them all to the scaffold. 59 

The hour of meeting was in the forenoon, usually at 
eleven o’clock. Exceptionally the session was called 
as early as nine, or again as late as twelve or even 
one o’clock. Occasionally there was an evening session 
as, for example, that of Sunday, February 5, 1865, 00 
in the record of which no hour is stated. On the basis 
of much evidence in the Diary I should venture the 
guess that meetings of Lincoln’s Cabinet seldom con¬ 
sumed more than two hours of time. There were occa- 
sionally stories from Lincoln at the beginning or near 
the close, some variety of gossip; but the real business 
was apt to be quickly disposed of. Now and again one 
finds records of cabinet sessions held during parts of 
consecutive days—as for instance the meetings of Mon¬ 
day, Tuesday and Wednesday, the last three days of 
December, 1862, just preceding the final issuance of 
the Emancipation Proclamation. 61 Again, at the most 
critical military moment of the War, the Cabinet as¬ 
sembled on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, July 5, 6 
and 7, 1863. 62 On Monday and Tuesday, September 
14-15, 1863, while the problem of habeas corpus was 

89 Diary I, 549. March 30, 1864. 

“Ibid., II, 237. 

“Ibid. I, 207-211. 

“Ibid., I, 359 ff. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 133 

before the Council, there were three meetings—two of 
them occurring on the second day. 63 

The records of Welles give much evidence on the 
subject of attendance at council sessions. At most 
sessions the President was of course present, but not 
always. Welles himself was (in his own words) “less 
absent than any other member. ’ ,64 In attendance Stan¬ 
ton was the most unaccountable member, particularly 
during 1863, when, according to the Secretary of the 
Navy, Stanton did not attend half the meetings. 65 Some 
he willfully ignored. Seward likewise and Chase were 
variable: they as well as Stanton would sometimes 
withdraw when the rest of the Council had assembled 
or very soon afterwards. 66 

Although there were regular cabinet days and some 
effort at order from near the opening of the adminis¬ 
tration, the cabinet sessions often seemed perfunctory 
or nearly useless. Welles, Chase and Blair, possibly 
others, voiced at different times the complaint that the 
Government was administered too much by heads of 
departments not properly co-ordinated or acting on 
that common understanding which cabinet sessions 
could or should bring about. It was certainly a recur¬ 
rent note sounded over many months. Nevertheless, 
looking back on the last night of 1863 over the year 
that had passed, the Secretary of the Navy was able 
to say this of Lincoln: 

“The President has well maintained his position, and under 
trying circumstances acquitted himself in a manner that 
will be better appreciated in the future than now. . . . The 

63 Diary. I, 431-434. 

M Ibid. I, 431. 

86 Ibid . I, 320. June 2, 1863. 

™IMd., See under dates: September 12, 1862; July 24, August 14, 
1863; June 24, 1864. 



134 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

Cabinet, if a little discordant in some of its elements, has 
been united as regards him.” 67 

Certain outsiders were admitted occasionally to 
cabinet sessions—General Scott and Commodore 
Stringham among others near the outset of the admin¬ 
istration. On Friday, July 31, 1863, Colonel Rawlins 
on General Grant’s staff delivered the official report of 
the siege of Vicksburg and the capture of Pemberton’s 
army. He was before the Cabinet for two hours and 
from Welles’s description of the occasion any reader 
may gather that the interview was both interesting and 
very informing. About a fortnight later, on Friday, 
August 14, the victor of Gettysburg, General Meade, 
called unexpectedly at the executive mansion while the 
Cabinet was in session. It is manifest from the record 
that the Secretary of the Navy, and probably his col¬ 
leagues could not forget that Meade had allowed Lee to 
escape into Virginia. There are no details. Quite the 
best known appearance of an outsider at a cabinet 
session is probably that of General Grant who was 
present at the last cabinet session which Lincoln was 
destined ever to attend—the session on the morning of 
the fatal Friday, April 14, 1865—five days after Lee’s 
surrender at Appomatox. It was Good Friday. A 
sense of deep and tranquil happiness had come over the 
country, and was particularly felt in the nation’s capi¬ 
tal. That very morning Grant reached the city and on 
arriving went to the executive mansion. Here Welles 
found him in conversation with Lincoln and several 
cabinet officers. Lincoln invited Grant to remain for 
the cabinet session that was about to be held. 

The meeting opened with talk about General Sher¬ 
man. Anxiety was expressed as to the probable out¬ 
come of Sherman’s movements against the Confeder- 


07 Diary , I, 500. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 135 

ates under Johnston. Grant was expecting news from 
Sherman at any moment. The President assured Grant 
and the assembled advisers that the news would come 
soon and be favorable, for he said that he had had on 
the preceding night a dream. This dream, he added, 
was apt to come before some great event. He had had 
the same dream before Sumter, Bull Run, Antietam, 
Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, and Wilmington. 
At Welles’s request Lincoln related the dream: 

“He said it related to your (my) element, the water; that he 
seemed to be in some singular, indescribable vessel, and that 
he was moving with great rapidity towards an indefinite 
shore. . . .” 

The account of the dream, slight as it was, made an 
impression on the minds of several listeners, and was 
recalled vividly by them after the happenings of the 
next twenty-four hours or so. Then followed the seri¬ 
ous business of the session: (i) a consideration of 
the problem of reestablishing trade relations with the 
districts so recently in rebellion by opening the ports 
and arousing natural commercial and social inter¬ 
course in at least that portion of the South east of the 
Mississippi river. Grant was frequently appealed to 
as familiar with conditions, and gave useful informa¬ 
tion and counsel, (ii) A matter of greater perplexity 
was the problem which had confronted the Cabinet for 
many months—that of political readjustment and re¬ 
construction. Stanton had already drawn up his ideas 
in the shape of a plan or ordinance which was then be¬ 
fore the Council. This ordinance, taken in connection 
with the regulations of the Peirpont regime in Virginia, 
would afford an outline of government which, accord¬ 
ing to Lincoln’s view, should not be ignored. Stanton’s 
ordinance was finally referred back to the Secretary 


136 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

of War, with directions from Lincoln that it be brought 
forward once more, having undergone sundry changes, 
at the next meeting of the Cabinet on the Tuesday fol¬ 
lowing, April 18. Copies of the Stanton ordinance 
were to be made in order that it might be closely ex- 
aminated by every member of the Cabinet. With this 
understanding, the meeting was dismissed. 

Our knowledge of this cabinet session rests chiefly on 
the evidence furnished by Mr. Welles. We know from 
him that Grant remained through the meeting. Seward 
was absent, confined as the result of a recent accident 
to his house. Speed, the Attorney-General, and Usher 
of the Interior Department were not present; other¬ 
wise the Cabinet was complete. 

There were other instances of outsiders admitted to 
cabinet sessions during the Lincoln epoch. I have 
given instances enough to indicate how at critical times 
the Cabinet sought enlightenment from visitors. The 
Lincoln Cabinet simply adopted a practice that Polk 
and no doubt other preceding chief magistrates had 
found useful. 

There are several illustrations of written opinions 
being exacted by Lincoln from his chosen advisers: (i) 
opinions in writing were taken in December, 1862, 
with reference to the proposal to divide Virginia into 
Virginia and West Virginia 68 ; (ii) again, about the 
same time, Seward, Chase, Welles, Bates, and Blair 
had each something to offer in writing with reference 
to the final formulation of the Proclamation of Eman¬ 
cipation 69 ; and (iii) in the following April, 1863, the 
Peterhoff Case was sufficiently technical and trying to 
make it incumbent on the President to get such written 

"Diary. I, 208. Monday, December 29. 

"Ibid. I, 210-211. Cf. Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln VI, 405- 
419 (passim). 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 137 

opinions as he could from those well-informed on ques¬ 
tions of international law. The usefulness of Welles 
was peculiarly evident in this latter instance. 

The “Peterhoff” was a British merchant steamer 
bound for the Mexican port of Matamoras, but cap¬ 
tured with goods intended for the Mexicans and gov¬ 
ernment mails. The Cabinet was especially concerned 
with the problem of the proper disposition of the mails. 
It was not a subject of widespread public considera¬ 
tion, but inasmuch as this aspect of the case was sure 
to be watched closely by the British government, any 
mishandling of it might, it was felt at the time, lead 
us into grave international difficulties. In fact the 
problem concealed unlimited trouble with England. 
Lincoln was quick to recognize its gravity. Although 
the ultimate settlement of the case rested with the 
courts—it was actually decided by the Supreme Court 
in 1866 70 —the President, desiring that the diplomatic 
point should be clearly grasped as a matter of general 
policy, called on the Secretary of State and the Sec¬ 
retary of the Navy for written opinions. Welles la¬ 
bored on his opinion for the better portion of a week 
and presented under date of April 25 a long and care¬ 
fully studied paper. 71 The mail, Welles contended, 
could be examined by the prize court before it was de¬ 
livered up to the British government or sent to its des¬ 
tination. Seward, having rather summarily—as it 
seemed to Welles—adopted a different principle in a 
letter written the previous October which was in the 
nature of an order to blockading and naval officers (a 
letter, be it said, which had come to the knowledge of 
Lord Lyons, English minister in Washington) at- 

70 5 Wallace, pp. 28-62. The opinion was delivered by Chief Justice 
Chase, a member of the Cabinet in 1863. 

71 Diary . I, 266-310 (passim). Lincoln and Seward, pp. 100 ff. Cf. 
W. E. Hall, International Law (4 ed., 1895), pp. 703 ff. 



138 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

tempted to dispute Welles’s contention. Senator Sum¬ 
ner sustained the Welles point of view. And in the 
writers cited by Welles there was undoubtedly some 
ground for it. Yet, read today, the opinion of Secre¬ 
tary Welles fails to carry conviction. But before 
Welles’s opinion was given, Seward had followed out 
his original design, for on April 21 he instructed 
Charles Francis Adams, our minister in London, that 
the Peterhoff’s mail would be forwarded to its destina¬ 
tion unopened. 72 There cannot be much doubt that 
Seward acted in a way least likely to provoke on the 
part of England ill-feeling, whatever the law in the 
case. His high-principled and industrious opponent, 
the Secretary of the Navy, had at least proved to the 
President his watchfulness over the national interests 
so far as his department was concerned. 

The period of the War was so very unusual and 
brought such strain upon all parts of the government, 
but especially upon the executive administration, that 
it would be surprising to find even the Cabinet an alto¬ 
gether normal institution under the circumstances. Yet 
our best recent evidence goes to show that the Council 
was directed through most of the period pretty effec¬ 
tively, with some regard to system and order of meet¬ 
ings. Welles wrote: 

‘‘Measures and important movements of each of the depart¬ 
ments were generally, but not always, submitted to the 
Cabinet. The President was invariably consulted. . . . The 
policy of the President and the course of administration 
were based on substantial principles and convictions to 
which he firmly adhered.” 73 

He was no martinet, like Polk. But he was a man of 

72 J. B. Moore, Digest of International Law (1906), VII, ch. xxiv, 
§ 1201 . 

73 Lincoln and Seward , p. 47. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 139 

real discernment in state affairs, and a very shrewd 
judge of men. 

VII. 

Seward, Welles, and Hugh McCulloch of Indiana— 
the latter successor in the Treasury Secretaryship to 
W. P. Fessenden—all remained in Andrew Johnson’s 
Cabinet for the next four years. This was undoubtedly 
a fortunate circumstance, for, generally speaking, 
Johnson’s administration was hardly normal in its 
more intimate or interior workings. The Cabinet, easily 
affected by its environment and somewhat swayed from 
its usual practices by strained relations between sev¬ 
eral of its members and the chief magistrate, was never 
a specially congenial or homogeneous body. As early 
as July, 1866, three of the advisers, Postmaster-Gen¬ 
eral Dennison, Attorney-General Speed, and the Secre¬ 
tary of the Interior James Harlan of Iowa, resigned 
from the Council, and their places had to be filled. 
Stanton, the Secretary of War, by declining to resign 
until he was virtually forced to do so and actually sus¬ 
pended from his place by order of Johnson, created 
intolerable difficulties for the President. But mean¬ 
time dissentient and radical members of the House had 
forced impeachment proceedings and thus wracked the 
executive power to its foundations, bringing about a 
national crisis and preventing any normal equilibrium 
between executive and legislative forces for the re¬ 
mainder of the ill-fated term. The impeachment was 
the gravest incident in the history of the Presidency. 
But it is remarkable that it did not interfere more 
vitally than it appears to have done in the matter of 
cabinet sessions. In March, 1868, there is the highest 
record of cabinet sessions to be found during any single 
month of cabinet history that I have ever examined— 


140 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 

seventeen, all told. In January, 1848, Polk’s Cabinet, 
then hard at work on the settlement of Mexican affairs, 
met fourteen times. But in March, 1868, it is of course 
to be remembered that Johnson’s Cabinet was endeav¬ 
oring to save the political life of the chief magistrate 
against thoroughly embittered foes. 

The Diary of Welles gives some evidence on nearly 
300 Cabinet sessions (297) of the administration. The 
Tuesday-Friday rule was maintained as it had been 
for the greater part of Lincoln’s terms. The Cabinet 
met in the forenoon, probably at eleven o’clock, but 
noon meetings were not uncommon. 74 Meetings at 
other times were rare, and Sunday meetings especially 
so unless there was an emergency. In June, 1865, 
Welles remarked: 

“The meetings are better and more punctually attended than 
under Mr. Lincoln’s administration, and measures are more 
generally discussed, which undoubtedly tends to better ad¬ 
ministration. . .” 75 

Attention was paid to the rank of the officers in speak¬ 
ing at sessions, for on at least one occasion the Secre¬ 
tary of the Interior was mentioned as having first 
spoken out of turn. 76 As early as June, 1865, there 
were rumors from the outside that the impression was 
gaining ground that Congress and the Judiciary were 
being ignored—that they were “mere instruments” in 
the hands of an over-bearing executive who meant to 
direct affairs very much as he pleased. 77 Stanton’s 
course in the War Department was proving unsatisfac¬ 
tory to some of his cabinet colleagues. 78 And even 
Johnson by the winter of 1865 had aroused sufficient 

74 See Diary, March 10, July 28, November 17, 1868. 

75 June 20. 

78 May 1, 1866; January 8, 1867. 

77 June 30. 

78 August 8, 1865. 



Learned: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 141 

antagonism to mark him for possible impeachment by 
the House. 79 Stanton, Harlan, and Speed were all of 
them displeased by the President’s veto of the Freed- 
men’s Bureau bill in the early spring of 1866. 80 Al¬ 
though Welles remarked on a “ pleasant and harmoni¬ 
ous” session of the Cabinet on February 20 of that 
year, the expression seemed to imply that such meet¬ 
ings were becoming worthy of comment and rather 
unusual. Within the next few months the President 
had become quite dissatisfied with several of his reg¬ 
ular counsellors. 81 There was lack of cordiality among 
them. 

In the spring of 1867 there was very general disap¬ 
proval in the Council of the Tenure of Office bill. Stan- 
bery, one of the ablest Attorneys-General who have 
ever sat in the Cabinet, was perfectly clear in his posi¬ 
tion. Seward and Stanton were asked by Johnson to 
prepare a veto message, and they did so. 82 It was in 
August of that year that the President requested Stan- 
ton’s resignation. 83 Failing to receive it, he suspended 
him and appointed Grant as ad interim Secretary of 
War—a decision that led to endless complications. It 
is not to be inferred that Cabinet sessions became much 
less frequent as troubles heaped up; though there may 
have been some falling off in regularity: for Welles 
declared occasionally that the President had “no con¬ 
fidants” and failed to communicate freely with his ad¬ 
visers. 84 Written opinions, though unusual, were occa¬ 
sionally requested. 85 Votes in cabinet sessions were 

T9 December 11. 

“‘February 19. 

81 April 14. 

“"February 26, August 6, 1867. 

83 August 5. 

“ 4 Cf. Diary under August 31, 1867; February 22, 28, March 17, 
1868. 

““January 4, February 15, 1867. 



142 Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 


likewise infrequent. 86 But we find two very careful and 
elaborate records of as many cabinet sessions held on 
June 18-19, 1867—still in the Johnson Manuscripts. 
These records carefully taken down in a clerical hand, 
indicate the whole course of proceedings in cabinet on 
the subject during two days of a discussion of the Re¬ 
construction Acts. Johnson wished to be perfectly 
clear about the interpretation of the acts, and had an 
opinion of the Attorney-General as a basis for discus¬ 
sion beside the text (in print) of the Acts themselves. 
Many votes were taken on the different points of inter¬ 
pretation involved—all carefully recorded; and they 
reveal today a unique official record of that trouble¬ 
some period. 87 

Outside the circle of the regular counsellors there 
appeared from time to time others: notably on various 
occasions the assistant secretaries of the Depart¬ 
ments when, for any reason, the Secretaries were ab¬ 
sent. Welles makes occasional note of them and ob¬ 
jects to speaking of the more intimate matters concern¬ 
ing policy in their presence. 88 Johnson’s private sec¬ 
retary, Colonel Moore must often have been present, 
probably with marked regularity—fulfilling very much 
such a function as did Polk’s secretary, J. Knox 
Walker in the years, 1845-49. Indeed Washington had 
his Tobias Lear who, though not recorded at any of 
Washington’s cabinet sessions, may yet have attended 
occasionally. Lear, Walker, Moore—and Mr. Joseph 
Tumulty. Although there is no doubt about the rule 
of numerous administrations in having the Cabinet 
summoned by the Secretary of State, it is I think, al¬ 
together probable that some variety of cabinet sessions 

89 July 21, 1865. 

87 Johnson Papers. MSS. in Library of Congress, vol. 115. 

ts Diary. 



Leartied: Aspects of the Cabinet Meeting. 143 

have been summoned by the private secretary from 
early times to the present day. 

Large allowance must be made for Welles’s rather 
persistent inclination to criticise Secretary Seward. 
But when he speaks of Seward on a Saturday in Jan¬ 
uary, 1867, “dancing round Stevens, Sumner, Boutwell, 
Banks and others,” of his running to the Capitol and 
seating himself first by Stevens in the House and then 
by Sumner in the Senate, a matter which made com¬ 
ment in the galleries and provided the reporters of 
those days with gossip for the newspapers, he not only 
is amusingly picturesque, however irritated by the 
practice he may be, but he also, all unconsciously, af¬ 
fords to the historian a glimpse of truth that relieves 
somewhat the figure of the Premier in the staid and 
sober sessions of Johnson’s Cabinet Council. 89 


The Cabinet, although strictly speaking unrecog¬ 
nized by Constitution or law—mentioned but once, so 
far as I am aware, in a federal statute—is yet an insti¬ 
tution fixed by the force of old practices now amount¬ 
ing to strong customs in our national scheme of gov¬ 
ernment. It provided all Presidents with a corps of 
experts, qualified, if well chosen, in many matters only 
to be comprehended by men of learning or ripe and 
varied experience. Its meetings constitute only one as- 
spect of its importance. But they afford, if it can be 
extracted from very refractory materials, the very 
essence of its purpose and its usefulness. 


ee Diary. Ill, 25-26. 









































































































































































































































































































































